- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Hot off the Presses

| Fall/Winter 2015-2016

The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa

By Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development, Harvard Kennedy School

Second Edition

Oxford University Press (Sept. 2015)

This new edition of The New Harvest provides ideas on how to implement a series of high-level decisions adopted by African leaders to place agriculture at the center of the continent’s long-term economic transformation. It puts agriculture in the context of the Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy (STISA-24) adopted by African presidents in 2014. More importantly, this edition provides a policy framework that could be adopted for other sectors such as health, industry, and green innovation.

A remarkably optimistic outlook for agriculture in Africa...Juma’s account succeeds in offering a glimpse of the possible. The book provides a welcome relief from the gloom and despair in popular narratives about African agriculture. -Science


A Liberal Actor in a Realist World: The European Union Regulatory State and the Global Political Economy of Energy

By Andreas Goldthau, Associate, Geopolitics of Energy Projectand Nick Sitter

Oxford University Press (August 2015)

Since 1992, the European Union has put liberalization at the core of its energy policy agenda. This aspiration was very much in line with an international political economy driven by the neo-liberal (Washington) consensus. The central challenge for the EU is that the energy world has changed, while the EU has not. The rise of Asian energy consumers (China and India), more assertive energy producers (Russia), and the threat of climate change have securitized the IPE of energy, and turned it more “realist.” The main research question is therefore: “What does a liberal actor do in a realist world?” The overall answer as far as the EU is concerned is that it approaches energy challenges as a problem of market failure.

A Liberal Actor in a Realist World assesses the changing nature of the global political economy of energy and the European Union’s response and the external dimension of the regulatory state.


The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform

By Jason Brownlee, Tarek Masoud, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, and Andrew Reynolds

Oxford University Press (February 2015)

Several years after the Arab Spring began, democracy remains elusive in the Middle East. The Arab Spring that resides in the popular imagination is one in which a wave of mass mobilization swept the broader Middle East, toppled dictators, and cleared the way for democracy. The reality is that few Arab countries have experienced anything of the sort. While Tunisia made progress towards some type of constitutionally entrenched participatory rule, the other countries that overthrew their rulers—Egypt, Yemen, and Libya—remain mired in authoritarianism and instability. Elsewhere in the Arab world uprisings were suppressed, subsided or never materialized. Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds find that the success of domestic uprisings depended on the absence of a hereditary executive and a dearth of oil rents. Structural factors also cast a shadow over the transition process. Even when opposition forces toppled dictators, prior levels of socioeconomic development and state strength shaped whether nascent democracy, resurgent authoritarianism, or unbridled civil war would follow.

This is quite simply the best analysis of the Arab Spring that I have read....The conclusions are thoughtful, highly intelligent, and mostly depressing. But as a work of scholarship and in its relevance to real world issues, this is extremely impressive. —Fareed Zakaria


Cybersecurity: A Practical Guide to the Law of Cyber Risk

Edited by Edward R. McNicholas and Vivek Mohan, Associate, Cyber Security Project

Practising Law Institute (2015)

Cybersecurity, authored by 20 experts in the field, provides the practical steps that can be taken to help clients understand and mitigate today’s cyber risk and to build the most resilient response capabilities possible.

For more information on this publication: Belfer Communications Office
For Academic Citation: Lynch, Susan, ed. Hot off the Presses.” Belfer Center Newsletter (Fall/Winter 2015-2016).

Editor